Unencumbered By Employment (UBE).
First, how I found that I was about
to be pushed squarely into what I been planning for years — to get off the High Tech (High Stress) track, and enjoy the life
I worked toward for more than two decades:
Bill Clark told me.
Bill's an ex-colleague
and fellow geek; lives in Kansas, hometown of SPRINT
and a great place to meet meat. We were working together at a Chelmsford, MA -based company called Astralpoint Communications. It was ultimately sold to Alcatel for a pittance (about US$130M), by the CEO who proclaimed "We'll never sell this company for less than $5 billion". Yeah Raj. Alcatel has pretty much divested in all of Astral's original products. Easy come, easy go. Anyway...
How'd this unfold?
I'd gotten a couple of phone messages from Jim Lang
(then-US-Sales Manager) that morning. It seemed strange, because
I wasn't in his management chain at all — I been reporting
to Bryan Hall (then-VP/Market Development Manager) for about six months.
I never actually connected with him that "fateful" Monday;
I guess it was pretty chaotic in Chelmsford (glad I missed it).
As for Market Development, Astral's market never really got "developed",
but to give him some credit, I must say Bryan's hair was
always perfectly coiffed. We must strive to excel at something.
Sometime that morning, Bill calls me: "I hear
you got whacked, too".
"What you been smokin', W'im?", I thought. He explained what'd happened. Ultimately I called and reached Bryan.
I didn't ask why it was he hadn't told me himself. Too busy
Developing Markets, I guess. Wimp.
What most folks at the office (certainly including
Bryan) didn't know, is that I'd just (a few days before)
crafted a resignation letter. I wasn't being permitted to do the
work I'd been hired to do; it was time to go. I was waiting for a timely moment to spring the letter and put my career back in my own hands.
 It's all I can stands, and I can't stands no more.
I'd spent the previous month arranging a trip to
Asia to line up potential Resellers in North Asia, where US telecom
standards are used. I'd called in a lot of favors, spent Astral's
money; made time commitments. On a Thursday afternoon one
day prior to the trip, Bryan called me, and offered the lame excuse
that "with just the two of us" (me and him) - "we
couldn't possibly support all the business that might be drummed
up".
Of course at that time I couldn't know that this lame
excuse was, um, a lame excuse, because I was about to be
laid off. How silly of me (in retrospect) to think that, me being a direct
report to an Officer of a company, my boss might have enough respect
for a subordinate, to let him know what was going down. Silly me.
Since my trip had been cancelled on near-zero notice,
my calendar had been effectively cleared for two weeks. Quite a
luxury in those crazy days, I decided to take advantage of it. I
dropped Bryan a note that I'd be taking that fateful Monday off.
Late on Monday (after the s*&t had hit the fan), (after
they turned the email system back on), I got a note from Bryan, cc:
to HR. I still remember the wording:
 "I did not authorize this vacation,
report to the office immediately".
You could have said "Please".
I remember laughing out loud. I might have saluted the PC.
I think it's natural to be bitter about
a layoff, but under the circumstances (we had neither the product nor the strategy for my work to be successful), I'd have laid
me off too. So not only am I not bitter, in retrospect I am
thankful for having been guided, albeit bluntly, to a new
life. I didn't make a killing on the stock — few of us will.
I imagine Bryan will do OK.
Oh and Bryan? He got laid off. He's been through a couple of
startups since... nobody I've ever heard of. |
